`Mask` Provides Powerful Lesson On How To Judge People

``Mask`` will touch us emotionally. Who can look at a film about a badly disfigured teenage boy and not be moved?

And yet the excellence of ``Mask`` derives from the fact that its story still would be appealing even if the youngster involved had a normal face. That`s because the characters who surround him--his biker mother and a motorcycle gang of Dutch aunts and uncles--are fascinating all by themselves. ``Mask,`` directed by Peter Bogdanovich, is based on the true story of Rocky Dennis, a California youngster who at age 2 1/2 began showing signs of a disease that deposited large amounts of calcium around his face and cranium. As Rocky got older, doctors repeatedly told his mother that he would die in a matter of months. But he would hang on until he was 16, enjoying a full and varied life, because other than his facial disfigurment Rocky Dennis was a model youngster, bright in school and well-adjusted to his handicap.

In ``Mask,`` major credit for Rocky`s stability is attributed to his mother Rusty (played by Cher in yet another fine performance), who treats him as if he were perfectly normal and insists that others treat Rocky the same way. In one of the film`s opening scenes, we see Rusty browbeat a junior high school principal who wants to send Rocky to a school for the handicapped. The principal says it will be better that way, but Rusty wants to know, in effect, ``better for whom?``

It`s an appropriate question, of course, one that has an applicability the world over. For example, earlier this week Ted Koppel posed the same question to a South African politician who said it would be better if some blacks were relocated out of white neighborhoods and into all-black areas.

The point is well made in ``Mask``: Classifying someone as handicapped may be a handicap all by itself.

But ``Mask`` is more than a lecture. The film is very wise and accurate about the behavior it shows. The character of Rocky (played memorably by Eric Stoltz) is one of the most credible teenagers on film in recent years. Rocky collects baseball cards, listens to rock music and is desperately interested in, and afraid of, having a relationship with a young woman.

Such a relationship does develop at a summer camp Rocky attends, and the nervousness and exquisite excitement that it generates is a dead-on recollection of the pleasures and pain of a teenage romance--any teenage romance.

Rocky`s mother is another story, and one worth a movie all by herself. Her romance with Rocky`s father dissolved a long time ago for reasons unexplained. Now she has an off-again-on-again relationship with a biker named Gar (Sam Elliott, in the film`s only wooden characterization).

Rusty also is trying to beat her own drug habit, and it`s fascinating to watch someone in effect juggle three balls--drugs, men and a child in jeopardy. And a fourth ball is added to the mix when her parents, who disapprove of her lifestyle, arrive on the scene.

Helping her in the juggling is the unlikely support group of a bunch of bikers who some critics have compared--because of their surprising gentleness --to the seven dwarfs. These bikers are a noisy but kindly lot, and one can only guess that the theme that links them to Rocky`s story is that we shouldn`t judge people by their appearance.

It`s a old lesson, but one well told with fresh faces in ``Mask.``

``MASK``

(STAR)(STAR)(STAR) 1/2

MINI-REVIEW: THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

Directed by Peter Bogdanovich; written by Anna Hamilton Phelan;

photographed by Laszlo Kovacs; edited by Barbara Ford; music by Bob Seger;

produced by Martin Starger; a Universal release at the Water Tower and outlying theaters. Rated PG-13.